Francis

My name is Francis Abu Kamara I am a currently a customer service associate for a major bank. I am also currently at college attending a Math GCSE course. I enjoy doing martial arts, going to the gym, playing video games, listening to music (mostly hip-hop), watching and reading stuff on football, religion, wrestling and sometimes politics/history and watching anime. I was born in England but on a technicality, I was still classed as Sierra Leonean as opposed to British. This meant I had to pay my way to claim British citizenship. My family were also threatened to be deported with me staying in the country through a foster family. 

I have been approached by people asking if I deal drugs. I have had many people make assumptions of my taste in music which is very annoying. When I was at work, a former colleague was listening to trap music (which I don’t really listen to) and she made a remark about how I listen to this in the “hood”. 

My dad's old neighbour had very strong views. He told us about how the white man is intellectually smarter than the black or brown man. Explaining how they created sports and cars etc. It is this privileged view that we are seeing more and more over the years. At first me and my cousin laughed it off but we realised that he was serious. It made me think that even in a diverse city like Birmingham that racism is still apparent in this country, and growing up made me realise that it never left.

I think Brexit has given racism more exposure and with the rise of social media, we can see racism more and more. While I feel it has gotten worse in the sense that there is more exposure; I am not surprised at the same time as racism is part of this country’s history. Dave Chappelle made a joke about this in which he stated how people are shocked by police brutality, but it has always been there. There’s just more exposure. 

We have had the national front, then the BNP. These are the old guard somewhat and now we have the EDL, Britain first. The media outlets like the S*n, Express and Daily Mail. The rise of the Conservative party as well coinciding with the rise of the far right. It’s easy for people with already ignorant and racist views to attach themselves to Brexit because it enables to publicly express those views because that's what they feel their government is expressing. With social media we are even seeing more politicians expressing those views